One Last Time
by LovelyJB
Summary: Set in 1951. A Puerto Rican man faces trial for murdering a white man. Prejudice and racial opinions are put to the test, and local reporter Ryan Evans finds himself once again drawn to the defendant’s wife Gabriella, the only woman he ever loved. Ryella.
1. The Trial

**So! This is officially my first EVER Ryella story. Yes, it is going to be a romance/drama/c****ourtroom drama/tear-jerker, just like my Troypay stories, and to tell you the truth, what I have in stored for this one might just be, dare I say it, just as good as Autumn Love Story (squee!!).**

**Okay, so at first I wanted to make this a Troypay, as per usual, but as much as I tried to fit it in, I just couldn't do it. There were too much major factors of the two characters I couldn't change for the story, because this story involves racial prejudice. This story is going to be reasonably realistic, so don't expect anything too dramatic and soapie.  
**

**I didn't want to get Taylor and Chad involved in this, because I'm afraid some of the language might insult people, so I settled for Ryan and Gabriella.**

**Yes, I know, I'm using Gabriella as the main female in a love story!! Don't worry, even though I dislike her character in HSM, I've managed to mould her into a character I like in my story.**

**Alright, cut to the chase. This story is going to be an adaptation (meaning totally based upon) of my all-time favourite novel **_**Snow Falling On Cedars**_**. The main plotline of the story is pretty much the same, but I've changed a few of the details. The story is about racial prejudice against the Japanese after Pearl Harbor, and this takes place inside a courtroom of white men and women. I've done some research and come across similar racial discrimination against Puerto Ricans in the early 1900s, so automatically Gabriella's going to Puerto Rican (I've always wanted her to be Puerto Rican after I watched West Side Story).**

**I'm pretty sure none of the kids reading this would have read Snow Falling On Cedars. It's not a kid-friendly book, and I'm sure it isn't as famous enough as Harry Potter for anyone else to know the whole story. Instead, I'll give you my version of it. :) **

**I'm sorry, but I'm going back to school next week. All my stories will have to be put on hold until then, but after my exams I'm gonna finish them.**

* * *

Antonio Calderón sat at the defendant's table in a proud and rigid stance. His hands were folded neatly in front of him on the hard wooden desk as quiet murmurs from around him flowed through. While others fidgeted and exchanged comments as they waited for the verdict, no one could read the accused man's expression. Many took this as a mask of apathy that hid the fear of a guilty man.

But no one could tell.

Dressed in a white cotton shirt buttoned up to the very top with a simple blue tie and sensible grey trousers, Antonio Calderón was impassive, not even a flicker of emotion in his dark brown eyes.

He was a tall, handsome man of Puerto Rican descent, his skin was tanned slightly, not from the sun, and his thick black hair was cropped close to his skull in a way that the wind could never make a single strand of hair fall out of place. His features were smooth and hard, his figure strong with physical strength, especially his arms and neck that were muscular and toned of that of a working man. His dark silent eyes lingered out the window of the courtroom, where they stayed unmoved.

Snow was falling.

The courtroom was practically full, almost every seat taken. The gallery was, of course, divided into two sections; the defendant's and the plaintiff's, all of whom were eager as they were about to witness the murder trial. The plaintiff's side was entirely of Whites, all of whom have been connected or close friends or family of Daniel Swift, a local fisherman. Many of them had attended his funeral at Kendall Valley Hill, where he was now buried. Their friend, fellow fisherman and local hero was bid farewell on a Sunday afternoon ceremony and laid to rest beside his father, leaving behind a wife and three young boys.

On the defendant's side, every face was Latino. Besides his family and friends, most of the citizens of Puerto Rican descent, even those who knew Antonio Calderón very little, came.

The judge, the Honorable Samuel Page, sat patiently at the front as he flicked through the file booklets his bailiff Robert Weston had placed in front of him. It was not often that a murder trial would take place in the small Island County Courthouse, nor had any history of murder by law occurred in San Diéz, a small island off the coast of Oregon, according to Judge Page's memory.

A man of over sixty, Judge Page rubbed his wrinkled temples as he digested the information in the sheriff's report. He was a thin man, and though he still had a thick head of hair, all of it had turned white and grey with age. He worn half-moon spectacles that hid the true emotion of his eyes, and he had a white beard that he stroked out of habit. The members of the jury watched as they waited for the judge to resume the verdict.

They were crammed in together, as the room was, where the witness stand was only a meter away from the platform where the thirteen jurors sat, all with impassive expressions as they struggled to focus on the subject matter. All the men wore shirts and neckties, while the women wore their Sunday dresses.

The room were awfully stuffy, the steamers having been brought in to heat up the room as it snowed heavily outside. The wind howled and scratched against the window, the icy coldness of it causing thick condensation from the heat of the steam. Many of the citizens in the courtroom were sweating, but they stayed silent and carelessly wiped away the beads of sweat with a handkerchief.

The accused man stared out at the snow with silent wonderment. He had been locked up in the county jail for seventy days; the last week of September, and all of October and November. It was December now, the first month of winter. Antonio had been put into a basement cell where there were no windows or anything that gave him access to the outside world, and he realized only now that he had missed Autumn completely. The delicate snowflakes blew onto the window, creating condensation as it melted against the heat of the glass, blown by the cold blizzard wind. The flakes swirled around like a trail of crystals and diamonds, Antonio watched from the corner of his eyes.

It was magnificently beautiful.

San Diéz Island drifted a few miles from the coast of Oregon, having been discovered by Spaniards passing by in 1608. By the 1800s, white people from Oregon and Seattle arrived at the shores, ready to begin life, where they were intrigued by the fertile soil and plentiful fish in the harbors.

By the present year of 1951, San Diéz was the home of merely five thousand, all of whom had lived in peace in the last hundreds of years. Every once in a while there would be one corrupted soul who thrived in causing havoc, but overall, the islanders were non-violent to one another.

Armingdale was the island's only town, a village where you earned what you made. Farmers, fishermen and tailors brought in their stocks, and the town rarely needed to interact with outside towns. The citizens would eat their fish, eat their meat and vegetables, occasionally making profile in export of their fine products, but life altogether was simple for the folks of Armingdale.

It rained a lot. The skies were almost always cloudy at the end of the year, providing wind and other tiring weather to the citizens. The fishermen thrived nonetheless, the rain coming down gave their fish confidence to keep coming back, and the farmers needn't worry about their crops drying out. However, due to the constant weather, traffic and blockage of roads were a part of life for Armingdale folks, and many would hide away from the lashing winds and the stinging cold whenever winter would arrive.

Business was essential for the small town, with the main stores all lined up on one street, conveniently. Main Road consisted of a café, a retail store, Reba's Grocery Store, a drugstore, fisherman's Hardware Center, a post office, a four-star restaurant and a seamstress run by the two Clausen sisters. By the wharf, fishermen would line their boats up proudly where every night they would set out and pull in a catch, selling their load at dawn and bringing home the money that very same day. Salmon was the life source for Armingdale.

Outside the town, there was a forest where one could take a long walk and perhaps disappear and not be found for weeks. It was a serene and almost holy area, and in respect it was spared being knocked down. Cedar trees grew by the dozen, lining up alongside the hazel and elm, their roots covered in moss and fern from the rainfall. Deeper inside the forest, there was a small waterfall that provided the main water source when the rain wasn't enough to feed the hunger of these fifty foot giants.

The cedars were most beautiful in spring, as well as in winter when they were flaked with snow, the coldness not even bothering them, and they stood upright with such pride and dignity all year round. They grew around the town as well, along the rims of the cornfields and others.

The islanders built their lives around their products, such as strawberries, which grew plentifully in the fertile ground. The livestock such as cows and cattle grazed all day in the fields, stinking up the air with the fresh scent of manure that smelt the worst in the summertime. The farms and fields parallel Armingdale Beach, where the crystal blue ocean waves crashed down onto the white sparkling sand. The beach ran all around the island of San Diéz, no matter in what season, it would glitter with unique pebbles and stones that peered up from the sand like hidden treasure.

Away from the ocean, inside Armingdale County courtroom, the low murmuring of the jurors and the citizens continued throughout the short recess. Up above, opposite the windows where view of the court case would be the finest, newspaper reporters sat in their seats at a table set up especially for them. Many of them were from out of town, all of them now bored and twirling their pens between their fingers as they observed the trial. Some of them were journalists from Seattle and Portland, come here to watch a trial, the first trial ever in the island's history, to involve a Puerto Rican. They had none of the eagerness and seriousness of the citizens below them; they had no personal connection to this case, besides the fact that it was their job to record the event. Many had removed their jackets and had slumped back on their chairs, some almost about to fall asleep as their eyelids fluttered, while the rest commented on what was for lunch.

Ryan Evans, the local reporter, however, watched with alertness without shifting his eyes in case anything was to happen. He was a man of twenty-nine, blond hair and a stealth physique with brown eyes that had been hardened by the war.

He wiped his forehead of the beads of sweat with the cuff of his sleeve. He noted with dismay, that of course none of the out-of-town reporters were able to understand the trial as he, a native to the island, did. A couple of them had loosened their ties and yawned loudly during the trial, merely written down all of what had been said in a monotonic manner. Ryan, however, knew he couldn't look at this event with such indifference.

He knew Antonio Calderón. He had gone to the same high school with him, and Ryan couldn't bring himself to show even the slightest disrespect at his murder trial.

In the morning as he arrived at the courtroom at around nine o'clock, he had spoken with the wife of the accused man, Gabriella Calderón.

She sat with her back turned on the hall bench as she waited for the trial to begin. The courtroom was, so far, empty, and Gabriella's head was bent down and her lips moved in silent prayer. Ryan had only dared to peer in as he entered from the front door.

"Gabriella?" he said softly. He watched as her long eyelashes swept up and down, but she didn't turn to him. Ryan moved closer into the room. "Gabriella, are you alright?"

Her head tilted just slightly, but she did not look at him.

"Go away, Ryan," she whispered. It was so soft, almost a plead that sent a surge of pain through Ryan's heart as he realized she must have been crying.

"Please Gabriella," Ryan said.

Gabriella finally turned her eyes to face him. The darkness in her brown eyes reflected that of her heart. It wasn't hatred, though her stare was cold and hard, but Ryan could feel the distance she set between them. Her chocolate brown hair was braided and pinned down neatly and allowed to drape down the back of her neck, covering the top part of her ears and leaving enough of the wavy strands on her forehead that it did not get into her eyes. Her lips, pale from the exhaustion and stress of the trial as well as the weather, were tinted with red lipstick, but even the colour couldn't lift the sadness of her face.

"Go away," she muttered again. Her eyes for a moment shone with a new emotion, one that left Ryan uncertain of what it exactly meant. Sadness, anger, pain… "Go away."

"Gabriella…" Ryan said. "Don't be like this." Gabriella turned away again, her eyelashes sealing themselves together as she shut her eyes tight.

"Go away," she repeated. Her head lowered again, her eyes still shut. "Just go away."

As he sat there at the newspaper desk, he regretted having not said anything else to Gabriella, but he knew she wouldn't let him. Now, he watched as she re-entered the room from the hallway in time for the proceeding of the trial.

Her black dress swept against her knees as she tried unsuccessfully to walk past the plaintiff's family without having to be stared at. Ryan watched her hug the jacket in her arms as she sat down in the row behind the defendant's table, where her husband was. One of the reporters next to Ryan wolf-whistled quietly and pointed her out to the others. Antonio, as if sensing her, turned around on his seat and the two made eye contact for a few seconds. Gabriella struggled to give him a smile, despite the horrible thoughts and overwhelming urge to cry.

Ryan bit into the end of his pencil unconsciously as he acknowledged the brief moment between the Calderóns, knowing this was the first time in weeks they had seen each other's faces. His gaze shifted over to the windows and the snow, memories of his past youth reigniting.


	2. The Discovery

**Oh yeah, this thing is rated T for a reason. Some pretty graphic stuff in stored, but trust me when I say this is the PG version of what's in the real thing. **

* * *

The first witness that was called out by the prosecutor, Henry Thompson, was the sheriff of Armingdale, Todd Hastings. On the day Daniel Swift died, September 14, the sheriff was speaking to his secretary, Elaine Pierce, in his office about the documents on a recent report he had asked her to file for him. It was then when his deputy, Jeremy Hall, came in saying that there had been a call concerning Daniel Swift's car being found parked at the bottom of a sloped road by the cliff Rhoda's Peak.

"It was eight o'clock in the morning and the car had been left there all night with no sign of the driver anywhere," Todd said with a heavy breath. "Jeremy says it looked strange, considering it was Daniel and all, so I figured it was a good idea to take a look."

"To take a look?" Henry Thompson repeated, touching his chin thoughtfully. "It was out of the ordinary for Mr Swift's car to have been parked by the cliff?"

"Yes. That's what Jeremy told me," the sheriff replied gruffly.

"And the door was ajar?" Thompson asked, flipping through the sheriff's report.

"That's right," Todd said.

"And the handbrake was down?"

"Yes."

There was a quiet murmur again, but the judge and prosecutor ignored it. Henry Thompson clapped his hands behind his back and circled the waxed floor of the courtroom in front of the witness box.

"What did you do after Deputy Hall informed you?" he inquired. Sheriff Hastings took a deep breath and scratched his head subconsciously.

"I put down what was in my hands and went out to take a look," he replied. Thompson stopped circling and quirked an eyebrow.

"Didn't you consider this to be a slight overreaction," he said questionably. "To go investigate a vacant car left at the side of the road? Didn't it seem unnecessary?" Todd shrugged his shoulders.

"It would've been," he explained. "But this was Daniel Swift. It wasn't like him to just abandon his car like that. He did everything by the darn book. It just strucked me as odd, considering it was his car." The prosecutor nodded and acknowledged what the sheriff just said. He turned around and glanced briefly at the jury. He appreciated the sheriff's answer; it cast him in a favourable and moral light on his witness, and therefore portraying himself to be in the considered party.

"Just tell the court the whole story on your account," Thompson said. "Exactly how you came across to find Daniel Swift on September 14th."

The sheriff screwed up his forehead as he doubtfully tried to recollect the day of the discovery. He was a nervous man, normally uneasy when put to the spot, especially in the witness box in front of so many people who were waiting on their seats for his answer.

When he first joined the County Force in his early twenties, he never realized that he might one day become sheriff. Never, but here he was.

He was wearing his uniform as ordered by the court, his grey shirt tucked in his pants and his belt buckled up, Todd Hastings was a thin man with an ever-going air of uneasiness, which his usually drew attention from with his habit of always chewing Juicy Fruit gum. He was a man of fifty, having lost most of his greying hair with age. Though he had a strong posture, his figure had become much more emaciated throughout the years.

The night before, Todd had lied awake all night, too preoccupied about the trial the next morning. Too preoccupied about how he was going to tell the story of how he found Daniel's body to his friends and family.

He and his deputy Jeremy Hall drove to Justine Road where Daniel's car was said to be parked. It was a cloudy morning after a night of thick fog, and the faint sunlight seemed to ease the frosty chill of early dawn. The car, Todd noted as they arrived, was parked at a 30 degree angle along the slope of the road, a strange sighting. As Jeremy pulled over, Todd also noticed that the driver's door was slightly open, and peering inside the handbrake was down and the key was still in the ignition. Right away, Todd couldn't help but feel the worst had happened, and he automatically looked up the hill. Though it wasn't a fairly steep hill, there was still a considerable amount of altitude, and a horrible prediction of what might have happened struck him. Todd pulled down his hat as the ripples of sunlight from the morning sun reflected off the shiny top of the car into his eyes.

"Anyone touched anything?" he asked his deputy. Jeremy followed up behind him.

"No, everything's the way it was," he replied. Jeremy shook his head and placed a hand over his broad-brimmed hat. "I got a bad feeling about this, Todd…"

Todd winced and reached into his pocket for his Juicy Fruit. He examined the tires of the car, and one of them was different. The design was different altogether; it was odd that Daniel would've used a different sort of tire as a spare.

"Check the trunk, Jeremy," he said as he chewed on the stick of Juicy Fruit.

Jeremy pulled the key from inside the car and carried it round back to open the trunk.

"It's a flat spare," he called out to the sheriff. The deputy held the tire up in his hands. "It's been punctured real bad too."

Todd stood for a moment trying to paste it all together. A flat spare, a tire that didn't match with the other three, the car parked at an angle at the bottom of a steep road with the handbrake down and the key still in and the door ajar. The only thing left to do was to inspect what was at the top of the hill.

Though, as said before, the slope wasn't all that steep, Todd found that age had caused him to be much weaker than he was before. His feet grew heavy just after a few steps, and he became out of breath very quickly. Nonetheless, he hid this from his much younger deputy, and focused primarily on reaching the top. He also dreaded reaching the top of the hill, because he was pretty sure what he was going to find up there. He slipped another Juicy Fruit into his mouth and regretted the fact that this was all his responsibility.

Being the sheriff, he usually was the one to report bad news to families whenever there was an accident. He normally just went into a routine when he informed them, but this time he actually knew the victim. He knew Daniel Swift and his family.

He went to church with them, and he liked his family. Daniel's grandfather had migrated from Munich in the early days, where he established almost thirty acres of land in Armingdale, all of which were used to grow luscious orange trees. Daniel's father James was also an orange tree farmer, having passed away from a heart attack in '44. After that, Daniel's mother, Jane Swift, sold all the thirty acre to a local farming family, the Petersons, while her son was away at war. Most of the people on San Diéz liked the Swifts. As Todd recalled, Daniel had served as a gunner on the USS _Endeavour_, which went down during the invasion of Okinawa in 1943. He survived the war while other island boys didn't, to come home to a life as a fisherman.

Daniel Swift was a man of physical strength and stealth. The sea air had turned his blond hair russet and roughened the skin on his face. He was tall and built, much of his weigh carried on his chest and shoulders. He always wore that woolen cap his wife, Caroline, had knitted for him whenever the weather was cold. Though Daniel was respected as a skilled and successful fisherman, he did not socialize or make friends much. He never went out to have coffee with friends or was seen hanging out at the café or anything. His work was his primary concern. He was still polite and courteous when talking to people, but Todd realized he rarely laughed, and the war was probably to blame for that. His wife was a local in the area, her family having been the first of the Caucasian settlers to arrive at San Diéz, and through the marriage Daniel was able to obtain about three acres down by Ruby Valley, in which he was given when Caroline's father passed away. He had built a house there, and had even invited his mother, Jane, to come live with them for a while. Jane, of course, refused. She was a grave yet proud woman, who still had an edge of a Tectonic accent, and she lived in same house she and her husband built together thirty years ago. She still was close to Daniel, coming into church together and leaving together, always escorting him back to his house where they would have supper together.

Daniel had that same grave quality as his mother, and had little to say after the war, but overall Daniel Swift was a good man.

"Take a look around," Todd said. He grunted as they finally reached the top of the cliff, and to his dismay a point on the road there was no fence to separate the road from the cliff's edge.

"He fell," Jeremy concluded as he stared down at the car at the bottom. Todd nodded subconsciously.

"Looks like it," he said grimly. He took cautious steps to the ledge while Jeremy seemed eager to find out what was down there.

"Whenever you're ready," the young deputy said.

Todd took a few moments to explain certain matters to his deputy before allowing him to proceed. Jeremy was merely twenty four, the son of a brick mason, and he had never seen a body before. Todd had seen it twice, one was a fisherman who slipped into his net and drowned, and another who was hit by a car. He wasn't sure he was ready to see a man at the bottom of a cliff with his guts and brains spilt out, but it was his job to look and see. He knew what the body would look like, the gruesome details and all. Jeremy didn't.

"Check around the area down there," Todd told him. "See anything, just holler." Jeremy nodded, and Todd stepped aside for him.

They scanned around the road side, but there was no trace of anything, so now it was done to what was at the bottom of the cliff. It wasn't easy looking, there were trees and shrubs at the bottom that blocked the view of the floor. It was probably a 20 yard fall, no one would survive. Jeremy leaned as far as he could, when something caught his eye. He managed a strained gasp, but no words. Todd hurried over.

"What is it?" he said. Jeremy quickly ran over to a nearby bush and vomited. Todd immediately spotted what Jeremy had been staring at.

At the bottom of the cliff, right smack-bang at the bottom, was Daniel Swift. He was flat on his back, his arms and legs were mangled by the fall, and his head bloodied and tilted to the side. Even from the distance, Todd could see that Daniel's pupils had disappeared and his eyes almost shone white. His head was puddled in a pool of blood, seeping out from the crack in his skull. Todd turned away.

Jeremy stuck his head back up from behind the bush, a sickly green colour to his face as he cleared his throat and wiped his mouth.

"Jesus Christ," was all he could say. "Jesus Goddamn Christ."

"Alright, Jeremy," Todd urged. "Get a hold of yourself." Jeremy shook his head again, his gaze lingering.

"Jesus Christ," he said again.

Todd knew how the kid felt, it was the exact feeling he had when he saw his first body.

"Come on," Todd said. He glanced over at the other end of the road, and surely enough there was a staircase leading down to the bottom of the cliff. He looked over at his deputy, who took a few seconds to recover. "Come on, we've gotta bring him up." Jeremy nodded reluctantly.

The stairs were narrow and much, much steeper than the hill. Todd felt dizzy to even look down as he took step after step on the wooden boards. It was amazing how something like this was so steady and in place, though Todd wasn't thinking about that too much at that time. Jeremy followed behind him, both his hands on the rails to support himself, and as the two men reached the bottom, the sight of the deceased was even worst than from above.

His body was twisted and bloody, Todd now realized that the white of Daniel's eyes weren't white; the blood vessels in his eyes had burst, and now they were two red orbs inside his head. Daniel's mouth was open, his face an expression of shock, bathed in a puddle of his own blood, which soaked his woollen overalls and his blond beard. Jeremy vomited again. Todd took a deep breath and forced his eyes away from the face.

From then, the day went by as slowly as ever. Todd sent Jeremy to call a team to carry the body out, and in the ten minutes he waited, he had nothing to do but stare at Daniel Swift with the gut-retching pain of having to be the one to tell his family. When Jeremy and a crew finally arrived, Daniel's body was shifted for the first time.

"Must've tripped and fell," Jeremy said. "The car must've rolled away." He frowned and pointed at the head of the deceased to Todd. "Hey, what's that?" The crew set the body onto a stretcher and ready to pull a shroud over his head when Todd asked for one last look.

On the left side of the head, across the temple, just above the ear and nearly the whole left back side of it, Todd spotted what looked like a long narrow slit embedded in the bloodied scalp that must have been three inches in length. It was a clean cut, and there was a chipped opening in the skull where brain material was visible through the blood.

Todd Hastings turned away.


End file.
